Dave Beauvais’ Web Site

Okay, my first post in two months, and it’s going to be another rant. Sorry.

I’m a big user of keyboard shortcuts. More often than not, if I can do something with a keyboard rather than reaching for the mouse, that’s what I’ll do. Every Windows application that I have used since Windows 3.0 — and even some DOS apps before then — has used the keyboard shortcut Alt-F, A to bring up the File menu and select “Save As….” In Adobe Photoshop CS, however, Alt-F, A is “Open As….”

Then we come to Adobe Acrobat 7. In every previous version of Acrobat I could press H or Z to switch to the Hand and Zoom tools, respectively. But not in version 7. No, in Acrobat 7, I must use the mouse to select these tools from a somewhat cluttered and unintuitive toolbar. It’s almost as if another development team took over Acrobat after version 5 and makes it worse with each new release. (Though 6 was by far the worst.)

I’ve become increasingly amazed at Adobe’s arrogance over the years, but this is getting stupid. You don’t just change established GUI conventions; especially not on tools used by thousands of professionals who rely on your software for their livelihood. Don’t force your users to unlearn keystrokes which have become instinctive over years of use. Or if you do, at least give users the ability to edit the menus so they can go back to the standard way of doing things. I’ve been using Photoshop CS for about a year now and I still end up with the “Open As…” dialog almost every single time I use it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 17th, 2005 at 00:43 and is filed under Annoyances, PCs, Software, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.